Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (16-bit)/Development

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Prerelease videos

So as we know, there have been a few prerelease videos released in the run-up to the game, which include:

The Mean Machines Sega promotional VHS, which shows a build that looks to have come a little later after the Simon Wai prototype and shows Emerald Hill, Chemical Plant and Hill Top. Also, Tails has Sonic's life icon in 2P VS Mode.
The Spanish promotional VHS, which shows a build that appears to be much like the one in the above video, except Tails now has his own life icon in 2P VS (but still says "SONIC").
A preview of the game shown on the UK game show Gamesmaster, which shows a build made later from the above two videos, with work-in-progress title cards and a Casino Night with a finalised design but different object placement. Nobody ever seems to talk about the build in this video.

Though, given how they're YouTube videos, how do we cover them in this page? --BSonirachi (talk) 11:35, 16 February 2019 (EST)

Truth be told, I don't know. I've been thinking about it for a while, but there's currently no means of saying "show 10 seconds of footage starting at this point in time".

I guess as a start, promotional videos could be uploaded (in full) to Retro CDN - at least then the content is accessible to us. We'll figure something out after then. -Black Squirrel (talk) 11:52, 16 February 2019 (EST)

End of an era

I don't think we need the screenshots under "Later protoypes" anymore (unless some came directly from Sega as press photos). Between the alpha and pre-beta prototypes, I think everything is accounted for.

TODO:

double check that
make sure the magazines where those screenshots are from are covered in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (16-bit)/Magazine articles, so we're not "losing" anything
burn all the individual images
re-write this page

-Black Squirrel (talk) 10:14, 16 November 2019 (EST)

Text on the timeline diagram

In the higher-def image showing the timeline documents of Sonic 2's initial time travel concept, the Japanese katakana is barely readable. I've made out the text as follows:

Timeline Diagram

Japanese text on the timeline diagram shows the initial plans for how Sonic progresses through the story. It seems to conflict at points with the English comments added in the presentation, such as the absence of "Medival Time" and Hidden Palace. The image quality for the last line is too poor to make sense of.

"現在" (Present)

"グリーン" ("Green", Green Hill Zone, expected to have become Emerald Hill Zone)
"オーシャン" ("Ocean", Ocean Wind Zone)
"ウッド" ("Wood", Wood Zone)
"サンド" ("Sand", Sand Shower Zone)
"メトロポリス" ("Metropolis", Metropolis Zone)
"EGGMANにげる" ("Eggman escapes")

"過去" (Past)

"トロピカルサン" ("Tropical Sun", likely Tropical Sun Zone)
"オーシャン" ("Ocean", has some extra characters too blurry to make out in the image)
"ヒルトップ" ("Hill Top", Hill Top Zone)

"現在2" (Present 2)

"ロック" ("Rock", Rock World Zone)
"オイル" ("Oil", Oil Ocean Zone)
"ダスト" ("Dust", Dust Hill Zone)
"デスエッグ" ("Death Egg", Death Egg Zone)
"EGGMANにげる" ("Eggman escapes", has some extra characters too blurry to make out in the image)

"過去" (Past 2?)

"ヒルトップ" ("Hill Top", Hill Top Zone)
"ブルー" ("Blue", Blue Lake Zone)

"未来" (Future)

"カジノ" ("Casino", Casino Night Zone)
"ケミカル" ("Chemical", Chemical Plant Zone)
"ジェノサイド" ("Genocide", Genocide City Zone)
"デスエッグネオ" ("Death Egg Neo")

todo

If I were a younger man I'd dig up all the references and re-write chunks of this myself, but there's a lot to unpack and the Sonic scene bums me out at times. Too many people going off and doing their own thing rather than working together - that's far less of a thing on Sega Retro.

Anyway basically everything Sonic-related here:

cdn:Category:Tom Payne Papers

needs covering. I was all set just to replace the file links, but now I'm thinking the booklets ought to be kept together where possible - while some bits of paper are literally just numbers, it tells a story - you can see the order of when things were tackled, which is context you would lose if the pages were separated. e.g. Genocide City work coming after Metropolis. There are even calendars in here.

But I don't know how best to best handle this - whether there's a "Tom Payne papers" sub-page, or it all gets dumped on this page, or what. I think it needs more than one set of hands.

Any palettes can be handled with template:MDPalette -Black Squirrel (talk) 14:37, 13 December 2023 (EST)

Just going to spitball this out here: don't you think we should have had a "Video footage" section on this page a long time ago, which covers early Sonic 2 footage in numerous sources? In this case, there's...

Nick Arcade
The Mega Preview Tape
That Spanish preview tape
Sega Shinsaku Soft Video Vol. 24
That one episode of GamesMaster which featured footage of the September 14th prototype

I gave the 8-bit Sonic 2 development page a video footage section some time ago as an example of this. Granted, some of the previews above feature prototypes we now have access to, but it has to be worth documenting them anyway just because they exist. Plus, all those preview tapes appear to show builds made a little bit later than the August 21st prototype (e.g. Tails AI being finalised). Admittedly I did bring this up earlier, but I thought something should be done about it by now. --BSonirachi (talk) 13:37, 15 December 2023 (EST)

Yes it should have - and we should be hosting the videos. Although I think Sonic Retro has trouble showing video file pages at the moment - so many bugs -Black Squirrel (talk) 16:06, 15 December 2023 (EST)

Correct, videos can't be shown, or even uploaded for that matter. It has to go through CDN and then use the Gitem template. JaxTH (talk) 16:39, 15 December 2023 (EST)

Sadly, yep. Literally the only way I could have Sega Forever's old video footage of Sonic Labyrinth to be documented on its development page. Best we could do for now. --BSonirachi (talk) 16:49, 15 December 2023 (EST)